Terminate/suspend a account = resource hog?

Every time i terminate or suspend a account during peak hours, my server seems to take it really hard, with system load skyrocketing and even some services failing for a couple minutes. Why does it happen? Is it supposed to be like that? Thanks!

Staff Member

Every time i terminate or suspend a account during peak hours, my server seems to take it really hard, with system load skyrocketing and even some services failing for a couple minutes. Why does it happen? Is it supposed to be like that? Thanks!

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The symptoms described do not sound normal, but given that it is being performed during "peak hours" it is difficult to determine with certainty what is to be expected without knowing more verbose detail (that is determined by the system administrator monitoring the server regularly).

When the high load occurs while suspending or terminating an account what is seen running from the command "top" via root SSH access? I would monitor the system for several minutes before performing the action and then proceed to suspend or terminate an account and continue monitoring closely to gather more information about what processes are using the most resources and to check if there are high I/O wait times.

What is the OS release, full cPanel version number, and environment type?

Staff Member

Terminating an account removes the home directory, the zone files, databases and anything else owned by the account. It also restarts Apache ( should be a graceful restart ) and performs a bind reconfig ( like a graceful restart ). All of this will generate some I/O load on the server.

If performed during peak hours of the server than the load issue is exacerbated by the other tasks the server is performing.

If the terminated account had a lot of data ( e.g. large home directory, large databases ) then the window of heavy I/O will be longer.

Kenneth
Development
cPanel, Inc.

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